​After more than four years of constant exercises – arm, hand, speech, leg, walking – I still can’t get up, or walk unaided, or balance more than a minute, or swallow thin liquids or talk clearly without my tongue twisting. So, when my older brother was visiting, I told him about it and asked him about the cause. My neurosurgeon had talked to him about that, he answered. Patients with disabilities who exercised sometimes reached a plateau. I didn’t have a chance to talk with him until he left for Israel, so when I was chatting on the phone with my med school friend, Fernanda, I thought I could consult with her husband, David, who is a physician specialized in rehabilitation. I asked him for how long I would have to do my exercises. The view about the amount of years had varied over time, was his answer. But the bottom line was, you had to do them all the time to maintain muscle tone. Then he passed on the phone to Fernanda.
After I signed off, I felt depressed. The future seemed hopeless. I pictured myself ten years from now, grey-haired and wrinkled, doing my exercise routine every day. I talked to Eric about my conversation with David. To my surprise, he was nonchalant about it. Everybody had to do exercises to keep their muscles toned, he said. What? Then I wasn’t special after all?
A couple of days later, I was resting in bed. I was tired after a full day of exercises, writing, reading, and chatting with friends. My mind was shot. I couldn’t read or write. So, I lay in bed, my mind drifting, while I heard the usual sounds of Eric cooking in the kitchen. Then, it dawned on me: it wasn’t “everybody”; it was athletes that needed to train every day. Otherwise, they would lose muscle tone and be out of shape, and their performance would worsen. The result would be the defeat of their team, and likely the loss of their job. That meant that I didn’t have to act as if I were a disabled person – I had to act like an athlete. I had to focus on training every day to keep my muscle tone.  The far-away future didn’t matter: if I expected my disability to disappear, I was a candidate for disappointment. Instead, I had to focus on the present: on doing my exercises every day. That way, I wouldn’t be waking up thinking, Not again! I would be welcoming another day of exercises with enthusiasm.

​This August my mother and brothers came to Beacon to be here on my sixtieth birthday. The latest COVID variants are much less severe, and governments are giving more doses of the vaccine. So, fear has subsided, and borders are open, which has caused flights to grow. That is why my mother and brothers started planning a trip to New York for my sixtieth birthday. Three years had passed since I’d last seen them. Back in 2019, I’d been just discharged from the hospital and was slowly coming back to life. Now I could chat with them and enjoy their visit.
On the day of my birthday, I received many messages and phone calls – more than I could have ever imagined. The injury represented a turning point for me. Before I suffered it, I used to count the number of birthday wishes; afterward, I stopped counting: numbers were inconsequential because I didn’t need a permanent confirmation of my value in their eyes. But no matter what the number was, they made me feel loved. What is more, despite my insistence against their doing anything, my two brothers and my mother made three cakes. So, the small table was full of food – the three cakes and the fruit Eric bought and cut up.
Then, the guests arrived. We were ten in total, a small party, as I wanted it to be, but emanating warmth and a sense of mutual affection. They sang Happy Birthday, and I blew the candles. And they also sang a funny Happy Birthday song to the music of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” In 2019, there were a lot of people in my birthday party. It was outside in our backyard, and a large table covered with a tablecloth was packed with food brought by the guests (I talk about it in another chapter). It was fun, and I enjoyed it. This party, on the other hand, was inside (the day was unbearably hot), and it was much smaller. There was no food except for the cakes and the fruit. But it was fun, and full of love and joy. I will keep the memories stored in my mind so that I can resort to them when I feel frustrated, or despaired, or depressed – just like going on the deck.

​When we moved to Beacon about fourteen years ago, my life began to change. We wanted to leave Westchester. We had a baby and didn’t want him to grow up in Pelham, a bedroom city where we didn’t fit, either because of our income or because of our way of thinking. Beacon was affordable and had a life of its own. As soon as we closed on the new house, we began the transfer.
Beacon’s location is enviable: on the banks of the Hudson river, at the foot of Mount Beacon, and close to Hide Park and the Roosevelt and Vanderbilt estates. Scenic Hudson, the non-profit organization that concerns with renovating public spaces to bring residents closer to nature, have done a great job. They’ve transformed the banks of the Hudson into green parks, among others, Long Dock Park, one of my favorite places to go. Long Dock Park constituted my first stop when I started to work on Vida en la tierra (Life on Earth). Those visits were my initial contact with nature; they made me appreciate it, and Beacon. I learned the difference between living in the country and living in the city; I experienced the calming effect of the greenery, the river, and the silence. Eric, Nathan, and I would go the Riverfront Park (a very large park on the Hudson) or Long Dock to walk, swim, or listen to live concerts. I think I never enjoyed myself more than by sitting on the grass in front of the river and listening to music.
Then I got the injury. Since then, I’ve been going on the deck every day when the days are sunny and mild. Spending my time there, sitting in the wheelchair and feeling the lawn, leaves, and fruits keeping me company, gives me a sense of peace. Whenever I feel angry, impatient, or depressed I resort to the best cure – diving into nature. While I’m watching the trees around me, my mind travels to the Long Dock trail by the river, where I used to stroll in the spring. I picture high trunks climbing to the sky; others, twisted, brushing the soil; and yet others, split in two, that look like a nine-armed Hydra. And a soothing stillness embraces me. And I stay there for hours, and go back in search of comfort.
 
 

​Every day since more than four years ago, I’ve been doing exercises morning and evening, one day after the other. Following the guidance of the therapists at the outpatient rehab center, Eric and I organized the exercises in different groups, depending on the region of the body and the actions they targeted. My working day, then, is divided into different stages, and I do them every day. Every day I concentrate hard on swallowing without choking, on singing at the right volume, and on pronouncing words correctly. When it’s time for the body, I try to wake up my sleeping limbs: left upper arm, forearm, wrist, and hand, up to my fingertips; and left buttock, thigh, lower leg, ankle, and foot.
And every time I do my exercises, I have a goal in my mind: to strengthen a special muscle that was paralyzed after my injury. To fulfill that goal, I’ve had to focus my mind on that muscle; in my friend Elizabeth Castagna’s words, I’ve had to make my mind speak to it. When I’m resting, I meditate following the directions of the guide’s voice (as I tell in another chapter). And as I’m breathing, I focus on each muscle or organ of my body that the guide indicates.
So, every year, every day, every time since the injury, my mind has had to concentrate on my body’s different elements. That’s why wherever I am, a sense of my body is there with me: a sense of my whole body, of my whole self. I feel my body; I know where every part of it, every muscle, is. Every muscle is speaking to me, and I can hear it.
 
           

​Eric grew up around bikes. He was a bike mechanic and a bike racer. He was really into bikes in the past, and still likes to ride them and read about them. When he came across an assisted-motor tricycle built for people with disabilities, he immediately thought of me. The company, Utah Trikes, is small. They import parts from Germany and build them according to customers’ needs. He contacted the owners, and bought it thanks to the aid of generous friends. After the brain was no longer exposed, I started trying it. Eric thinks that once I get the hang of it, I’ll be able to visit friends in the neighborhood and go for rides on Madam Brett and Beacon’s rail trails with him and Nathan. Still, the trike is too wide to cross doors, and if I got in I’d have to transfer to a chair, which isn’t that safe. This means that I’d feel uncomfortable going to stores or coffee shops. So, I couldn’t go anywhere by myself – I still need help to move around.
            But when Kelly came, she said something that totally surprised me: wheelchairs could be changed every five years, and my wheelchair (manual, and therefore hard to maneuver with just one good arm and hand) was getting close to five years of use. So, it could be changed to an electric wheelchair, and the health insurance company would take charge of the cost. I envisioned all the things I could do with an electric wheelchair and was overjoyed. Imagine that! It was small enough to cross the threshold of coffee shops and friends’ houses; small enough to let me move around the aisles of stores; and I wouldn’t need to transfer to a chair: it was a chair itself!
When I eventually have the two vehicles, I’ll be able to do lots of things. Not only will I go visit friends in their backyards and bike trails with Eric and Nathan; I will also meet with friends at coffee shops and go to stores to buy medicines or other things I may need. By myself!
The two vehicles will give me a sense of independence. They will make me feel free. But I will need to overcome the fear that independence will cause: the protection that dependence offers (the boundaries it draws that I’m unable to cross) will be gone. I will be able to go everywhere I don’t want to go…

​These were Ellen’s, my cantor friend, last Friday services at the synagogue. The tables were packed. There was a lot of yummy food brought by the members. When we finished eating, it was time to celebrate. Everybody opened their prayer books; Eric and our drummer friend took their drums and sat, prepared to start drumming; and Ellen began leading and singing.
Before my injury, I would sing and find pleasure in singing. Eric and I would go to all Musical Shabbat services because we appreciate music. For a secular Jew and a non-Jew, music is the single and best connection with Jewish religion. I love hearing and singing old and known songs: cherished memories come back to me, and I feel at home in a foreign country. Hearing and making music, beautiful music that is an appeal to a god, as well as hearing Ellen’s powerful and gorgeous voice, touches Eric’s feelings. That’s why he wants to attend services. After the injury, Eric’s and my connection with Judaism has still been music. So, we both went to these services.
That night, I experienced a pleasant surprise. As I’ve told in a previous chapter, the bleeding over my brain stem changed my voice: I speak and sing at a softer volume, my pitch is low, and I have a limited range. So, when I joined the members’ voices in singing, I knew that mine couldn’t stand out in the group. Yet that had a good rather than a bad effect. In the past, I would take pleasure in singing, but also in hearing my voice sing. Every time I sang I could confirm the “beautiful” sound of my voice. Now, because my voice was no longer “beautiful,” I could delight in singing and in hearing others sing – especially Ellen and her gorgeous and moving voice; I could delight in hearing the others’ buoyant voices, and feel at home.

​ After all the long wait, after Eric’s careful and repeated shaving and washing of my head, after the neurosurgeon approved of the pictures of my scalp and the plastic surgeon saw it and gave the green light, a date for the surgery was set. Eric had to shave my head and wash it with an antiseptic shampoo a few days earlier. Then, I had to get a PCR test, and it had to be negative; I had to eat my last meal at midnight; and we had to get to the neurosurgery floor at 6 AM for pre-operation.
I was anxious for the entire time. What if we did something wrong? The surgery could be a disaster. I could have an infection. What’s more, there was another cause of anxiety. I had to go to the very same hospital where they’d done all the previous treatments: surgeries, intravenous antibiotics, anti-seizure meds, emergency surgeries, and potential emergency surgery that ended up in discharge, they all had been accompanied by hospitalization and an IV.
We arrived promptly at 6 AM. They weighed and measured me and changed me into a robe.  They put me on a stretcher, placed an IV in my arm, and rolled me into the operation room. I was very cold. They put a lot of warm covers over my body and took off my glasses. Minutes later, I was asleep.
I woke up feeling drowsy. I was outside the room, and Eric was holding my hand. He left, and I was moved to the ICU. I hated it; it reminded me of the recovery room, where I’d spent two long days after the previous surgery. There weren’t fake walls and glass doors covered with curtains, as in this one. And you could hear constant yells and moans there, while a calming silence reigned here. But the atmosphere was just the same. I was relieved when they moved me to a regular room.
I spent my last and best three days there. No EKG cables, no Oxygen monitors, no pressure cuffs, no constant sounds, and three very kind and efficient male nurses. Once the blood stopped coming out of the drainage, the plastic surgeon cleared me for discharge. I could go home, hopefully for good! I hadn’t infections or nightmarish complications. Despite all my fears, nothing had happened to me. I could go out after a mere four days of stay – a dream come true, and a surprise to me.
I’ve been home for a month. The only effects are tiredness, low blood pressure, high heartrate after exercise, and a difficulty reading that tires my eye. And probably they will go away over time. Every now and then, I think how mild they are, and I marvel at the lack of fulfillment of my worst fantasies. And I smile.

​ 
My brain injury happened in April, 2018, a little over four years ago. Despite four years of constant exercise, I’m still unable to walk or move my left arm and hand. I can’t move around except in the wheelchair (I’m still practicing to walk with a walker). So, I spend most of my days lying in bed or sitting in the wheelchair on the deck and reading, writing, and translating. The only exception is when I’m doing my arm exercises or practicing to walk.
 That’s why I devote a long time to thinking; since I can’t walk, I walk with my imagination. I see with my mind’s eyes a lot of different scenes in the books I read: Greek and Trojan armies facing each other in the battle field; Hector and Achilles fighting in front of Troy’s castle, Achilles full of wrath for the death of Patroclus; a tall, slender, and bespectacled man strolling down the streets of Lisbon; a woman taking a revolver out of a drawer and shooting her husband.
My inability to move around has enabled my mind to travel – has expanded my mind and caused it to develop new eyes. I can see things that are located farther away than I could reach before my injury, when I could walk and travel practically anywhere. When I was writing poetry before the injury, I always had to make an effort to conjure up images that would illustrate an idea. Now, I hear something from a friend or a feeling makes an impact on me that I want to transform into a poem, and images come to me right away.
I’ve changed in another way: What I doubted four years ago, I accept today. And I accept it because I can see it with my new eyes; my mind can travel to it. And because I accept it, my mind can open to new horizons. In this way, a cycle is set in motion that will make my world larger and richer.

​The days have started to get sunny and warmer, and the snow has melted on the deck and the backyard. You can see the green grass, and green buds have slowly sprouted from the trees and turned into leaves. So, I’ve made going out on the deck after lunch part of my daily routine. Bright colors surround me, for the bushes and the peach tree have blossomed. My computer and my Kindle are on my garden table, and while I read and work, I enjoy looking at the life around me. A friend had recommended a book to me, Braiding Sweetgrass, and I’ve started listening to it on YouTube.
The author is Native American. She’s a poet and an ecologist. Her book compares this culture with Western culture: their traditions, their cosmologies, their relationship to the land (both connected), and their notion of property and the consequent economies. But the book is more than that: she also compares scientific (Western) and Indigenous ways of knowledge; she writes about Indigenous culture and language, especially about language as a way of knowledge; and most importantly, about the oppression of Native Americans and the elimination of their culture and language (and, therefore, of them as a people) by the US government.  
The book really struck me and resonated with me. I knew about the US government’s attitude toward the Native American peoples (very similar to the Argentinian government’s), but not in such detail. And it resonated with me because since we moved to Beacon, my relationship to nature has significantly changed. At first what appealed to me about my new home was the quiet, the river, and the mountains. Then it was the green and the multiplicity of colors in the spring, the summer, and the fall. Yet after the injury everything changed. Ever since I’ve started going on the deck, the backyard has become my friend and my source of solace. That’s why Mary Wall’s definition of plants as sentient beings stirred many feelings in me. As I was listening, I pictured a forest full of trees laden with leaves, full of life that will create life in further generations. I saw myself surrounded by trees and felt a strong sense of comfort and protection.
And that’s why I welcome this season and the gift of peace she gives to me. That’s why when I finish eating lunch, I’m always eager to go out with my Kindle, computer, and earbuds. I’m ready to receive my gift and thank her for it.

​When my nurse aid gets here every morning, the first thing she does is preparing my breakfast, which consists of a fruit and yogurt shake, prune compote, pieces of bread pudding, and water. For quite a while, swallowing the shake was an operation: to avoid it to go down the wrong pipe, I had to take half a spoon on my tongue, push it down with my tongue muscles, and tighten the muscles of my swallowing apparatus to send it through my pharynx. Since my hemangioma’s bleeding, I’ve lost my ability to swallow hard solids and liquids, especially thin liquids. That’s the reason for the operation. And when I’m swallowing water, I have to focus on each step and do it very slowly so as not to choke (I talk about it in the Water chapter).
Recently, my nurse aid brought me breakfast, shake included. I stirred it and started the steps of the operation: I filled half a spoon, put it on my tongue, and pushed it down with my tongue muscles. But when I was ready to concentrate on tightening the muscles of my swallowing apparatus, they tightened on their own without my effort! I was both happy and doubtful. Didn’t I need to make a big effort? Maybe just a tiny one?
After breakfast, it was time for speech exercises: breathing, flexing my mouth against the resistance of face flexors, blowing water with a metal straw, saying “a” and “e” for seven seconds or longer, sing a song, and read an excerpt of a book. Every exercise after the first two requires the use of my diaphragm to push the air I inhaled across my open mouth. And after the “a” and “e” exercise, I have to practice swallowing water (a thin liquid) four times. When it came the time to swallow water, I did the first steps (put the water on my tongue and pushing it down with my tongue muscles) veeery slowly. But when I was about to focus on tightening the muscles of my swallowing apparatus, they tightened on their own!
Ever since my success in swallowing liquids, I’ve been waiting for the tightening of the muscles to come, ready to tighten them; and every time, the muscles have tightened by themselves. I’m still doubtful, but despite my doubtfulness, and despite my need to verify the restored ability to swallow, deep down, I feell a quiet happiness, and a sense of achievement goes with me wherever I go.